I have attended countless conferences over the years and have subsequently
noted a great range in the effectiveness of their outcomes. A really
successful conference results in a heightened understanding of its subject
matter for those who attended the conference or read the published papers.
Many conferences fail to achieve this positive result, however the King-Hall
naval history conference in Canberra in July 1999 certainly proved to
be a great success.

The papers given at the conference, published here, re-examine some
important episodes of naval history, offer new ideas on maritime strategy,
and provide thoughts on issues of contemporary naval defence in Australia.
The book underlines the editors' belief in the "fundamental links
between history and strategy". At the same time there is due acknowledgment
of the unpredictability of war and in particular of the importance in
war of the human factor.

There are some revaluations of several areas of naval history, notably
the influence of the Japanese defeat of the Russian Fleet in 1905 and
the significance of the visit to Australia of the United States "Great
White Fleet" in 1908. As well, Dr Peter Overlack's chapter on Australian
maritime defence concerns before 1914 tells convincingly how defence
thinking in the Australian colonies, and then in the Commonwealth, was
dominated by fear of foreign penetration of the "self-declared
Australasian sphere of influence in the Pacific".

The book illustrates the value of sea power as "the great enabling
instrument of strategy", with its flexibility and adaptability
to technological and tactical change. The chapter by Professor Colin
Gray of the University of Reading gives a clarion call to doubters;
he says the "reason why naval power is so preferred is because
it offers prudent policymakers optimum flexibility". He declares
that it is not a sensible criticism of sea power to note that it functions
strategically only slowly, because that is its strategic nature. Nor
does he see any "debate of interest anywhere on the proposition
that naval power narrowly, let alone sea power writ large, is being
sidelined by the course of history". I especially warm to the conclusion
to his chapter, where he asserts "the dual conservative and radical
prediction that navies will remain in the new century much as they have
done in the previous one, only with different equipment. No revolution
in political affairs, strategic affairs, or technology, is going to
leave sea power or naval power irrelevantly on the beach".

Dr Michael Evans, of the Land Warfare Studies Centre, Duntroon, contributes
a chapter that gives cogency to two important notions in navalism. He
spells out the concept of "strategic culture" and its relationship
to a "way in warfare". The term strategic culture, he writes,
first emerged in the 1970s with the basic assumption "that there
exists in a nation-state a distinctive and lasting set of beliefs, values
and habits regarding the threat and the use of force, which have their
roots in such fundamental influences as geographical setting, history,
ideology and political culture". He believes "Australians
are a coastal people with a continental outlook, an island nation with
an inward focus", and he quotes a previous Minister for Defence,
Kim Beazley, as stating (with some frustration) that "despite a
host of good reasons for the contrary, Australia is not a maritime nation
and its people do not sustain much of an interest in maritime strategy".

In a perceptive examination of Australia's relations with Japan and
the United States, Dr James Reckner, of the Texas Tech University, tells
of staff planning in the United States in 1905 which saw "a global environment
in which Great Britain and its Dominions could not be excluded as potential
enemies [of the USA]". He also writes: "The 1905 renewal of the Anglo-Japanese
Alliance, with a new clause which required the signatories to provide
each other with full military assistance in the event either signatory
became involved in a war with any other power, further complicated the
situation [with the USA]".

In the book's concluding chapter, Captain James Goldrick writes that
a fleet alone does not constitute a navy. He makes the important point
that the decision of 1909 to create a fleet unit was just that. His
perception is that the Royal Australian Navy since 1911 has been primarily
dependent on the Royal Navy and lacked in-depth support of the Australian
electorate and of sophisticated industrial and human processes in Australia.
He points out this lack and its effects on the inherent conflict in
Australian naval defence, namely that between the protection of worldwide
commerce and a preoccupation with the needs of national territorial
defence.

Part of what makes this book of conference papers important is that
there is a refreshingly new attitude expressed by naval officers towards
the writing of naval history by non-service historians. The Chief of
Navy, Vice Admiral David Shackleton, writes that "the increased levels
of understanding of our naval history and of maritime strategic issues
in general will bear fruit in the years ahead". This welcome view, in
advance of that evinced by some other senior naval officers over the
years, is further underlined by his writing: "The Australian Navy has
made its share of mistakes over the last hundred years and we need to
recognise and understand them". In my experience of writing naval administrative
history, this enlightened attitude has not always been present and indeed
there has been too often a dreary certitude that only a person who had
"been there" was qualified to write history and that somewhere there
was a "true" history that would end all uncertainty and make superfluous
all calls for debate.

The Defence Force Journal for July/August 2001 has a transcript
of the Blamey Oration given on 16 May 2001 by the Minister for Defence,
Peter Reith. Here the minister speaks tellingly of Australia's strategic
situation in terms that to my mind owe not a little to some of the important
thoughts in the book under review. For example, Mr Reith sets out his
thinking "on the historical context of our new Defence White Paper"
which, he then says "also reflects and draws upon deep continuities
in our national strategic history. These continuities spring from the
enduring fundamentals of our strategic geography, and from the inherent
characteristics of our society". In both of these quotations I believe
one can hear echoes of statements to be found in these conference papers.

The editors have done well in the presentation of the book. There are
appropriate illustrations, adequate references and a good index. I found
the book easy to read. It stands up well as a unified work in spite
of its component parts having been written by different authors. It
warrants being read by all who have an interest in the defence of Australia
and more especially by those who have any hand in the devising and implementing
of naval policy, whether by way of political control, professional command,
or shore-based support.